Can you prove you are? Not with signs, or rallies, or even your words. Prove it with your own actions.

Because you resemble a white-right extremist. You say you are no such creature? But they have, in their credo, something about how whites are supposed to “out-breed” them; you know, them, the other, the unwanted; the wrong color, religion, whatever — what the Nazis espoused.

Are you just there to do a man’s bidding? He says “Jump,” you have to ask how high, he tells you “We’re makin’ babies” and you’re supposed to meekly say “How many?” Did he get a (better) job or health insurance, check references on nannies or build a mother-in-law apartment so somebody can be there to help you? Is he helping you go back to school?

You might be young and fertile and healthy, you female. Does that mean your destiny is to wear flowy skirts and stay barefoot and pregnant, to be a breeder, like a sow or doe — some bitch? These men are (supposedly) happy if you are a broody hen! Oh, except for the “good” Christian male who gets his mistress pregnant, then demands she get an abortion — because the l’il woman is supposed to listen to the man.

Many years ago I was a very peripheral member of a devout Christian group. That is, until I realized it was almost always the women caring for the kids while the men played soccer and guitars, both of which I was interested in. So church wasn’t my cup of tea. Maybe they were, in fact, gentle beings – although, much later, child abuse going on within the group would be revealed.

Then again, maybe they were simmering cesspools of hostilities like so many “incels,” involuntary celibates, who think women owe them attention and sex, who have increasingly been shooting innocents when they decide they’ve had enough of uppity females rejecting their advances. Maybe? Probably.

And while we’re on the subject of toxic masculinity, let’s go to Texas’s lieutenant governor and the NRA, who claim prayer in schools is what’s lacking, plus laid blame on the schools (for having too many doors), and on video games. Too bad they don’t seem to be kidding — or reasonable.

Schools have many doors because they, schools themselves, have been known to catch fire. Anyone who wants a repeat of the notorious, needless fire (December 1958, Chicago) at Our Lady of the Angels grammar school, in which children were told by the nuns to pray — not to run out — and which resulted in ninety-two kids dead from flames and smoke – you go right ahead and listen to Mr. Patrick and Mr. North. Praying didn’t help those little children of God, and fewer exits won’t help future scared students get away from shooters.

If they want to talk violent videos? Start long before video, at the beginning, with football. Football has until very recently encouraged young men to crack each other in the head with their own helmets, knock ’em down, pile on, binge-drink afterward. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy has increasingly shown up in football’s victims, causing some to have violent outbursts and/or to commit suicide. Hello Danny? Ollie? Why no “credit” where credit is due? Getting your sports bet ducks in a row for whenever that travesty descends on us?

So let’s not tippy-toe around toxic masculinity anymore; let’s call misogynists what they are. Start with a look in the mirror: do you boss your wife or girlfriend around? Do you refuse to listen to her, change the subject to shut her up, and/or enjoy making her cringe, then tell her she’s too sensitive? Did you get her (or maybe multiple hers) pregnant, then duck out? That doesn’t make you a partner or a real man, it makes you a gaslighting bully and/or coward!

Feminism is the “radical” belief that all people (not only women) are equal under the law. Feminism has started no wars, starved no-one, tortured no-one, killed no-one. Feminists help women control their own destiny.

The belief or implicit expectation that our daughters owe attention to any unpleasant men is the trouble, and more dads, coaches, teachers, and other leaders — all adults really — are overdue to correct that nasty misperception. Toxic masculinity is the root evil. Its adherents call the miscreant who went hunting (hunting for sorority girls in May, 2014, in California’s Isla Vista) a “supreme gentleman,” when nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who blames everything BUT this vile attitude, that men get to do whatever they want, allows this disease to fester and replicate.

And you know what else replicates and festers? Cancer!

Advertisements

Like this:

LikeLoading...

About majaramirez

former assistant instructor in tai chi chu'an; current TreeKeeper (#467); former Master Gardener; member of American Bird Conservancy, Audubon, Fraternal Order of Police, and Mensa; career cop, now assigned as Warrant/Summons Officer at Branches 29 & 42; wife and mom.